Zeldathon: An Early August Update.

But wait…

I discovered shortly after setting everything that Zeldathon is actually already A Thing. In fact, it’s A Great Thing! People play Zelda games nonstop for a few days for charity. This year, they raised $54,179.72 for the National Foundation for Transplants. How awesome is that?! I briefly considered changing the name of our little project here, but decided to leave it as is. But be sure to check out the official Zeldathon!

My gameplays.

After starting this idea up publicly, I finished playing through Wind Waker for the first time. I shared my thoughts on the Zeldathon Tumblr already, but I’ll post them here as well.

The animation style was a bit odd for me to get used to, considering the only Zelda game I’ve ever played in earnest to this point is Twilight Princess (I’ve begun both Ocarina of Time and Skyward Sword now, though). It felt very childlike, and at first I really wasn’t a fan. But the more I got into the game, the more I was grateful for the childlike nature of it. I suspect that if the animation style was more like Twilight Princess, we would have had a MUCH darker game — nothing wrong with that, but the animation and art direction did stop being distracting once the intro plot ended and I could finally appreciate the full storyline.

I really enjoyed Tetra’s spirit, leadership, and compassion. She was a reasonably well-rounded character until (SPOILERS) we discover that she is actually Zelda, at which point she was summarily considered to be of no further use in the game except to be damseled. I was frustrated with the general depiction of women in the game. There were few characters with whom I could identify (and I’ll be contrasting this when I write about my experience with Twilight Princess).

The storyline was very interesting to me. While I haven’t played through all of the games, I do know roundabout the timelines and stories of the rest of the games, so to see this sort of post-apocalyptic world and think about what had to happen in order to preserve the races was interesting to me. I did notice the lack of Zora, Gerudo, and Gorons and wondered why it was that seemingly the only people to have survived were the Hylians and forest dwellers. Perhaps this is something they will explore more fully in whatever upcoming Windwaker sequel they may be developing.

Overall, I really enjoyed the game. It’s definitely one that I will come back to in years to come.

I am currently playing through both Ocarina of Time and Skyward Sword for the first time each. I’m approaching the water temple in Ocarina, I believe. In Skyward Sword, I’m also in the water temple. (Huh.) So far, I’m thoroughly enjoying both games, but I’ll wait to say more until I’ve finished them both. Then I’ll be starting up Majora’s Mask and Twilight Princess, the latter of which is going to be my in-depth review.

What you guys are doing.

I have utterly failed to keep up with the tweets, which is a shame because @lanahobbs, @sarahnmoon, @peacefultaru, and others have tweeted some of their thoughts which have been wonderful. My deepest apologies for neglecting the collection of the tweets. So now I’m asking you if you end up live-tweeting your Zelda experience, could you create a Storify of them and link me? That would be fantastic and make my life much easier.

Jeremy is writing about his adventures through Oracle of Seasons. [ Part One ] [ Part Two ]

@rogueportjack and @duncankeller are doing a Let’s Play of every 3D Zelda game, starting with Ocarina of Time. The playlist is here and is updated every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. I’m loving their banter and find myself constantly wanting to talk back to them about their observations and opinions.